Too fast, furious

Charlotte dominates ice

Seven seconds away from the midpoint of the game between Milwaukee and Charlotte on Tuesday night, there was no score. Thirtysome minutes later, the lowly Checkers skated off the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena ice with a 5-1 victory.

“We thought the whole game wasn’t good,” Admirals coach Dean Evason said. “They skated, we did not. We looked slow; we were slow. They looked fast; they were fast. We had odd-man rushes just because they were beating us up the ice. No excuse, they outplayed us.”

Not only are Charlotte’s 24 total losses tied for most in the American Hockey League, the team also was playing its eighth straight game on the road and had just two wins in its previous 17 away contests.

The Checkers hadn’t scored as many as five goals in two months, they entered the game last in the league on the power play (10.5%) but scored two of them, and goalie C.J. Motte was making his first AHL start.

Milwaukee goalie Jonas Gunnarsson was playing his first game since Dec. 30 and seventh this season but gave up at least four goals for the fourth time.

The first goal Gunnarsson allowed was on a Charlotte power play that actually deflected in off the stick of teammate Adam Pardy with 10:06 to go in the second. But he gave up another, this time between his legs to Sergey Tolchinsky, just 24 seconds later.

Charlotte held a 3-1 lead when he gave up a goal to Lucas Wallmark just 43 seconds into the final period and then another one to Kris Newbury less than 3 minutes later for the Checkers’ four-goal advantage.

“I haven’t played a lot, but I’ve tried to stay focused in practice and be prepared when the opportunity comes,” Gunnarsson said. “Today wasn’t a top performance and I would like to do a couple of things different.”

Milwaukee’s only highlight was a goal from Justin Florek that snapped his eight-game streak without one with 8:44 left in the second.

But the turning point came when Petter Granberg was called for elbowing Jake Chelios against the boards behind Milwaukee’s net with 1:27 remaining. That led to another power-play goal for the Checkers, as Chelios’ shot was deflected in from Valentin Zykov with 43.8 seconds to go in the period.